


teach me to be comfortable in my own skin

by thiefless



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Insecure Peter Parker, Introversion, Introvert Peter Parker, Irondad, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Precious Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 15:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21412339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefless/pseuds/thiefless
Summary: "Mr. Stark?"Mr. Stark hummed but did not lift his eyes from his work. "Yeah, kid?""Does it bother you that I'm not normal?”-Shameless Irondad fluff.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 29
Kudos: 221





	teach me to be comfortable in my own skin

**Author's Note:**

> I... have no idea what this is. Just take it, and put it somewhere far, far away. Please?

Peter chanced it, blowing his exhale out through his cheeks with considerably more force than required. 

"Mr. Stark?"

Mr. Stark hummed but did not lift his eyes from his work. "Yeah, kid?"

"Does it bother you that I'm not normal?”

Mr. Stark paused, gently turning off the soldering iron. He turned around, brow showing signs of confusion. 

"What do you mean?"

Peter couldn't help the frustrated noise that bubbled up in his throat. "Y'know.” Lowering his voice, he followed it up with a, “That I'm an _introvert_?"

Mr. Stark huffed a laugh. "Is that it? God, kid, I thought you were going to tell me you'd grown eight legs since I last saw you."

Peter knew that Mr. Stark's joke was an attempt at lightening the mood, that Mr. Stark didn't mean anything by it, but that didn't stop his face from flushing in stark embarrassment. 

Mr. Stark must have realised that his words didn't have the intended effect. He'd been taking this whole mentoring gig seriously since Peter’d crashed his plane nearly two years ago, taking a more active role in Peter's life, which was why it made Peter inwardly cringe that he'd decided to voice his stupid, inconsequential teenage concerns.

"Okay, Pete," Mr. Stark said, removing his safety gear and turning off his equipment. He gave Peter his full, undivided attention, and a traitorous part of him preened at holding the attention of one of the best men Peter knew. Part of him was still in shock at even _knowing_ Tony Stark, personally and professionally, and getting to work alongside him. "Give me the laydown."

Peter frowned. Now that he'd opened this can of worms, he wanted nothing more than to firmly clamp down on the topic. Maybe he would have brushed it under the carpet had Mr. Stark not chosen to grace him with his attention, yet now it was a proper conversation. And Spider-Man wasn't a wimp.

...usually, anyway. 

"I just don't like being an introvert. I don't like how I get made to feel about it." Peter paused, frowned and said, "I really hate the word loner." A pause. "Probably because it rhymes with boner, so I hate it on principle."

Peter could see Mr. Stark barely refrain from the urge to snort in fondness at the his exuberant rambling.

"What, you hating words now?"

"Well, yeah. Words are the weapons of bullies, Mr. Stark. They rarely have anything nice to say." Stupid high school antics.

“True enough.” Mr. Stark stilled; Peter could see the cogs whirring in that genius brain of his, probably locating the best way to phrase what he was about to say. “You don’t have to do anything you want to do,” he said, as serious as Peter had heard. “If you don’t want to, then you don’t want to. There is nothing you could do that would make me think any less of you.”

"But I want to _want to_ want it," Peter replied forcefully, expelling his frustration inward.

Mr. Stark pursed his lips. "Kid, do you want to want to be an extrovert for you," he constructed carefully, "or is it because you feel society is telling you to?"

Peter didn’t answer. The consequential silence was damning in its own right.

"Pete, listen to me. If you have to want to want something then that's a pretty big indicator that you don't want it."

Peter refused to lift his eyes from the ground. "I just wish I could be like everybody else," he admitted weakly. 

What surprised him was the uncharacteristically open, boisterous chuckle he received in response. Peter's eyes snapped to Mr. Stark, expecting to find a hint of mockery belying the previous honesty he had sworn to uphold, but all Peter could see was unguarded mirth – _happiness_, rather than anticipated derision. 

"Kid, I don't know how it escaped your notice but you're not normal." Ouch. Peter was about to rescind his stance on Mr. Stark’s light-hearted humour when the billionaire continued, explaining: "You were bitten by a freaky, highly experimental, radioactive, mutated spider when you were fourteen. Now, that spider? That arachnid was as close to abnormal as you could get." Mr. Stark paused. Peter didn't know why. "But do you know what happened to that spider?"

_What?_ "Uh, no?"

Mr. Stark’s gaze was warm and open. "It bit the greatest kid on the planet."

Peter felt an involuntary flush decorate his cheeks, and he looked down in sheepish silence. "But I wanna be like you," he muttered into the ground, and those words were no less true than they were in the aftermath of the Ferry Incident. 

"Me? I'm a mess, kid. Yeah, I may have partied a little too heavy in my youth but I sure as hell didn't _enjoy_ it." Mr. Stark shot a gaping Peter a sardonic smile. "I did what you did, what countless other kids have done: pretended to be someone I'm not. And it was a roaring success. Everybody bought it. My Dad, the socialites that hung around my family like vultures, the media. Hell, I had myself fooled for a while. For a long while, actually."

Mr. Stark shook his head after he trailed off. "That's not the point." The genius heaved a weary sigh. "The point is: Peter, normality is a great idea. But that's all it is. An idea. Fiction. Idealised utopia. One great big slaughterhouse to keep the masses in line."

Peter tried to smile. It probably looked like a grimace. "Woah, Mr. Stark. That's... _dark_."

"I've found that, as I've gotten _older_," Mr. Stark paused to hurl a pointed look Peter's way, daring him to make the joke that was on the tip of his tongue. "I actively avoid any and all calls that favour socialising and on those rare occasions that Pepper forces me out the lab, I have to put on my mask. Become someone else for a while."

That... was not at all what Peter was expecting. "Really?" Something in his voice must have betrayed his disbelief for Mr. Stark snorted. 

"Yeah, kid," said Mr. Stark. "Why else you do think I insist on wearing sunglasses whenever I go out?" 

Peter chewed on his lip. "That's kinda like how Spider-Man is for me. Like, it's the one thing where I can just hide behind and be myself."

"Exactly. Chuck me in the lab and give me seventy-two uninterrupted hours, that's home to me." Mr. Stark smirked at Peter's laughter, relaxing a little as he did so. As though he'd been waiting for Peter to loosen his own defences first. 

"Just you, some rock music, and your bots, eh, Mr. Stark?"

Mr. Stark frowned. "And you, kid."

Peter's brain short-circuited. "Um. What?" He kept trying to catch Mr. Stark's attention but he was very pointedly avoiding his gaze. 

Mr. Stark sniffed. "In my head. Pep and Rhodey, even Happy, grumpy git that he is, are there – and you."

Peter opened and closed his mouth, probably looking for all the world like an inarticulate gaping fish. Mr. Stark didn't press the matter, and instead changed the topic at terminal velocity. Peter was still reeling from the revelation.

Mr. Stark waved a perfunctory hand. "Anyway, Peter, what my rather convoluted lecture is about is, pretending to be someone else to survive is not okay. That kinda shit messes with you, kid, and not in a good way." Mr. Stark waved down the length of his body, pausing for dramatic effect. "Take me for example. Prime candidate for How to Ruin Your Life 101. How does that saying go? _Do as I say, not as I do.”_

Peter smiled: slight and tentative, yet blooming all the same, absorbing all that Mr. Stark had said. Maybe some day he’d believe it, too.

There was a momentary hesitation on Mr. Stark's part, so brief Peter could have imagined it, before he clamped down his hand on Peter's shoulder, giving it a familial squeeze before drawing away. 

"Come on, kid," Mr. Stark said, a little stiffly if Peter did say so himself, "War Machine's armour isn't going to fix itself."

Peter nodded, feeling the burden that had haunted him like a dark cloud drift away the longer he basked in his surrogate father's presence.

~

Peter wouldn't know it, but months later, Mr. Stark would call a press conference and publicly hail Spider-Man as a true hero, tragically taken before his time. 

Peter wouldn't know it, but Mr. Stark's hands shook as he delivered a speech, laden with tears yet crafted by his own hand, at Peter's funeral. Mr. Stark's hands firmly clasped by Ms. Potts', a side hug gifted to him by Colonel Rhodes, and a grief-addled kinship joining him and Happy together. 

Peter wouldn't know it, but Mr. Stark could never look at his lab the same way – clean, stripped bare of chaotic disarray – again. It too bore a heavy scar that ripped open the flesh of the heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, my hand slipped and added a healthy dosage of IW feels in there. I couldn't help myself. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think :)


End file.
